I've seen apps like Isolator which allow one to focus or concentrate on the frontmost window by blurring out the others; I'm looking to do the opposite: blur out the main window (or the entire monitor) and be able to easily toggle it on or off.

My goal: using this with digital art software such as Photoshop or Illustrator, to create the "squint" effect one does to get a different perspective on how your artwork is progressing. I'd like to be able to toggle this on so I can work in "squint" mode for a bit, then toggle it off. Would be great to be able to easily set the blur level as well.

Hoping it can be accessed and toggled via Core Image and AppleScript or similar.

You could run something like Isolator and bring up a token front window (e.g. a TextEdit window, which can be made very small). That said, the fact that Isolator exists demonstrates that what you're looking for is possible. I don't know how to accomplish it.
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Kevin ReidMar 6 '12 at 13:33

Isolator uses a desktop-sized window with specific properties: it will stay behind the "isolated" foreground window but above all other windows, it will be semi-transparent and it will blur its background. Maybe fooling around with window properties in XCode will reveal such settings?
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fanaugenMar 6 '12 at 16:27

@bassplayer7 - I need to to be a live effect that affects anything underneath it.
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George CMar 8 '12 at 3:08

@fanaugen I don't have much familiarity with Xcode. But some of the research I did kept mentioning "gaussian blur" with "CoreImage" so it seemed a good place to start. I would have contact the Isolator developer but there is no contact info in the site.
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George CMar 8 '12 at 3:09

1 Answer
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Terminal.app lets you set the exact settings of its window. If you set them correctly, you can get a transparent window with a gaussian blur. If you simply leave a window open in the background in Terminal while doing your work, then bring up Terminal when you want to, this should work great. You can even make the text transparent if you want.